


I can’t make it to your wedding (but I’m sure I’ll be at your wake)

by Threadbear



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Doomed Relationship, Double Agents, Heartbreak, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Threadbear/pseuds/Threadbear
Summary: A love story, of sorts, of the walking wounded.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Severus Snape
Comments: 9
Kudos: 70





	I can’t make it to your wedding (but I’m sure I’ll be at your wake)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Não vou ao seu casamento (mas com certeza estarei no seu velório)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29802966) by [malakian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malakian/pseuds/malakian)



> The timeline roughly follows canon though I took liberties here and there.
> 
> The title is a line from Bukowski by Modest Mouse that I couldn't get out of my head.

_Is it a sin, is it a crime,_

_Loving you, dear, like I do?_

_If it’s a crime then I’m guilty_

_Guilty of loving you_

Lupin buttoned the cuffs of his shirt and said, “I can’t come again till Friday.”

Snape carefully finished arranging his robes around himself and smoothed down the front with his hands. He attempted to put as much sarcastic indifference into his shrug as he could muster.

“You don’t want to know why?”

“As I’ve said before, I’ve no interest in your schedule, nor in making this a regular occurrence.”

Lupin blinked at him but soon recovered and plastered on one of his usual mild, empty smiles.

Snape quirked his lip. “Shall we?”

At dinner in the Great Hall he tried not to think of Lupin just two spaces to the left of him nor of the noises he had ripped from his throat that ensured they always had to use a properly cast silencing spell nor the scratch of Lupin’s moustache against his neck nor the pleasant ache in his ass. He merely cleared his mind. There would come a time when relations such as this would put him in danger. The mark on his arm told him that time might not be far away.

After he’d forced him to resign he still came to him, with that defiant look on his face, anger bubbling beneath the surface. They said nothing about it but their coupling was rough and hostile.

He wasn’t sure why he had done it, except that he had suspected him of harbouring that bastard Black or at least knowing where he was. Later it emerged that perhaps he had been wrong about that.

The truth was he regretted it but there was nothing to be done about it now. I wish you’d stop moping, he snapped at him. I’m not moping, I’m angry at you, he’d replied. Well you know what you can do, Snape had said with a nod to the door.

Lupin let him treat him like this because he was one of the walking wounded too. Snape didn’t know how to do any better and Lupin didn’t know how to ask for any better so that was how it went with them.

Throughout the following year he still saw him. Lupin would come to him in his dungeons and he didn’t stop him, even when the mark he brandished on his arm started burning more fiercely and more frequent. He didn’t ask him where he stayed when he wasn’t with him.

Once they’d spent a weekend together in a little inn on the coast of Cornwall, the wind had been high and the rain almost constant and they had lit fires and made love on the heath and listened to music from the small transistor radio that came with the house. It had been almost immeasurably pleasant and sometimes in the years that followed when things got very bleak Severus would think of Lupin’s slow warm smile and the creases around his eyes in that tiny, spare and sea whipped room in Cornwall.

Even after he’d prostrated himself at his master’s feet he saw him still, though with no great frequency. Even when a discovery of his dalliance with a dark creature such as Lupin would mean death for both of them.

 _Tell Dumbledore you want to stop_ , Lupin said to him. _You can do just as much good fighting from our side_.

Stupid sentiment, even stupider logic.

 _Lupin_ , he’d called as he’d been leaving. _This doesn’t count, you and I. We’re not anything. You get no say in this_.

The next time he saw him, at number twelve, tugging him in to an empty bathroom, he’d balled his shirt in his fist and said, voice cracking, “How dare you ask me to watch you skirt death everyday then tell me this means nothing. How _dare_ you.”

Snape had avoided his eyes but Lupin had grabbed his chin with his hand and kept on.

“I’ll put up with everything, _everything_ but you don’t get to tell me I don’t count. Do you hear me? Nod if you hear me.”

Snape had nodded and then he had kissed him, maybe to shut him up, maybe for other reasons and Lupin had fucked him holding him up against the wall.

Then Remus had gone to the werewolves and Snape had learnt what that was like, though he said nothing. He begged a few days and risked everything he’d built to go to him and Lupin had risked the same to meet him and it was about the stupidest thing they’d done thus far. They’d been holed up in some caves near the ocean, it was nowhere near that place they had stayed in Cornwall, but one was reminded. 

Lupin was haggard and thin and dirty and... beautiful. Though of course he didn’t tell him that. He kept some things there, among them a transistor radio that ran on magic. Snape had shook his head, I suppose you don’t need me to tell you how dumb that is, he said. Remus had ignored him and turned it on. One needs to feel human sometimes, he said.

Remember this song? He’d said and Snape had looked at him with a fond eye roll. Of course he did.

“Dance with me.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

But Lupin had said _Please_ and he had looked so terribly heart weary and grief stricken. _Just this once, please_ , he had said.

So they had danced in the small, damp cave, cold except for the heat of their bodies pressed together and everything was horrible and desolate except that it wasn’t. ... _If it’s a crime then I’m guilty..._

He had said goodbye to him and only he knew he meant forever. Shortly after that he had killed Dumbledore and Lupin was of course there to witness it. He regretted that part.

From his place in the headmasters office and without Albus he started to forget who’s side he was on. He no longer had any connection to the Order. Perhaps he’d done it all for the Dark Lord after all. There was no one to know any different. But sometimes, on his nightly patrols he’d stand in Lupin’s old classroom and he’d see him there, just for a moment, head cocked, light bathed and smiling at him.

_I heard about the fun you had today._

_I happen to think you look good in a dress._

_Just for that I’ve half a mind to go back to my rooms, alone_.

Tie loosened and wand waved lazily at doors. That relentless, knowing smile.

How was he to have known that would be the very best of times?

He heard of him and the Black girl and he felt happy for him. Sort of. Somewhere deep down, he was probably happy for him. And he got up everyday and witnessed the only real home he’d ever known ravaged and transformed and the students he’d raised, tutored and sworn to protect tortured and debased and somewhere along the way he lost hope. But of course he of all people knew one does not need hope, one only needs to keep going.

When Lupin broke into the castle through the passage in the south wing that he had no official knowledge of, Snape’s first emotion was sheer panic.

 _Are you mad?_ He said to him after he’d dragged him up to the headmaster’s office. _What if someone else had found you?_

Then: _You look terrible_.

Then, remembering: _The Dark Lord will be pleased when I bring you to him._

Lupin ignored the last. Perhaps if he had led with it.

“I don’t — I.” And Snape tried to think of a way of getting him out unharmed. He could think of none.

“ - I loved you, did you know that? That whole time, you treated me terribly and I loved you through all of it.”

“What are you—“

“And even now I think if you gave me any indication that you — I would. For you I would. She’s pregnant and I need to marry her. But for you I’d ...”

“I — do you have any idea? I could get you killed. Coming here could _kill_ you. I’m a _Death Eater_. Do you not realise that? We’re _enemies_.”

“Of course. I just thought—“

“You didn’t think.” He hissed. “You come here with your sentiment and your stupid feelings and you expect me to, what? Confess my undying love? I told you. You do not matter. _We_ do not matter. The best I can do for you is not kill you on sight.”

Lupin nodded sadly. Snape almost smiled. Gryffindors. What was it about them?

“I have to call them.” He said and got out his wand.

“Remus?” He called after him. “They’ll be coming up the west staircase. Take the south. Leave through the way you came. Longbottom will hold them off. Be quick.”

Next month he read rumour in the Prophet of the nuptials and he folded the paper and placed it down on his desk. There were some things that one sacrificed for the cause that were ultimately inconsequential or easily given, like a decent nights rest or respect of ones peers or a quiet and unmolested mind. And then there were other things. Things that if you allowed could draw a sob from your throat and cause your mind to rage with the unfairness of it all. He got up from his seat and drawing his wand extracted a small silvery web from his head. He pulled down a jar and without hesitating he added it to the others. Already he felt lighter and more focused than he had in weeks. If he survived this he would think on it then. Though he very much expected not to.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote at the start is from the song [Guilty](https://open.spotify.com/track/0GlvumAvsHZNF4rkRhMUYq?si=skHOAOgFToSdpB_FWEd6WQ) sung by Al Bowlly and it is of course the song that Snape and Lupin dance to.


End file.
